Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday May 27, 2015 @01:42PM
from the better-late-than-never dept.

Taco Cowboy writes: A story about a 102-year old lady doing her PhD thesis defense is not that common, but when the thesis defense was delayed by a whopping 77 years, that gotta raise some eyebrows. Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport studied diphtheria at the University of Hamburg in Germany and in 1938, the 25-year old Protestant-raised, German-born Ingeborg submitted for her doctorate thesis defense. She was denied her chance for her defense because her mother was of the Jewish ancestry, making her an official "cross-breed". As such the Nazi regime forbid the university from proceeding with her defense, for "racial reasons".

She became one of the thousands of scholars and researchers banished from German academe, which at the time included many of the world's most prestigious research institutions, because of Jewish ancestry or opposition to Nazi policies. Many of them ended up suffering or dying in concentration camps. Rudolf Degkwitz, Syllm's professor, was imprisoned for objecting to euthanizing children. Syllm, however, was able to reach the United States and earned her medical degree from the old Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Eventually she married a fellow physician named Samuel Mitja Rapoport, had a family, and moved back to Germany in the 1950s, where she achieved prominence in neonatology. Syllm-Rapoport, who is now 102 years old, might have remained just a doctor (if a very accomplished one) had not the present dean of the Hamburg medical school, Uwe Koch-Gromus, heard her story from a colleague of her son, Tom Rapoport, a Harvard cell biologist.

Determined to do what he could to mitigate this wrong, Koch-Gromus arranged Syllm-Rapoport's long-delayed defense. Despite failing eyesight, she brushed up on decades of developments in diphtheria research with the help of friends and the Internet. Koch-Gromus called the 45-minute oral exam given by him and two colleagues on 13 May in her Berlin living room "a very good test. Frau Rapoport has gathered notable knowledge about what's happened since then. Particularly given her age, she was brilliant."

- too bad we don't have some racist and sexist Slashdoter to claim that, even five years after Hitler was in power, a Jewish women could study in a university, while today a White men is denied even to enter because some Black women replace him thanks to racism and sexism...

- too bad we don't have some racist and sexist Slashdoter to claim that, even five years after Hitler was in power, a Jewish women could study in a university, while today a White men is denied even to enter because some Black women replace him thanks to racism and sexism...

even five years after Hitler was in power, a Jewish women could study in a university, while today a White men is denied even to enter because some Black women replace him thanks to racism and sexism...

The discrimination is bad enough for Whites, but Asians actually have it even worse.

even five years after Hitler was in power, a Jewish women could study in a university, while today a White men is denied even to enter because some Black women replace him thanks to racism and sexism...

The discrimination is bad enough for Whites, but Asians actually have it even worse.

Yes, i agree, (eastern) Asians have it worse in USA, but i am from Europe, where not so many (eastern) Asians exist, so... White Europeans have this "privilige"!

It happens a lot. There is a, shall we say, generation gap in Germany and Austria. The Germans also have this attitude about "making things right."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org] When Kandel won the Nobel Prize in 2000, it was claimed in Vienna that he was an "Austrian" Nobel, something he found "typically Viennese: very opportunistic, very disingenuous, somewhat hypocritical." He also said it was "... certainly not an Austrian Nobel, it was a Jewish-American Nobel." After that, he got a call from then Aus

So how far have we come in life that, now, further education is a crippling fiscal penalty and not something government strives to achieve in the whole population. You would think governments would be endeavouring to get people to keep learning all their lives but no, higher education is considered a burden that is frowned upon as being a waste unless it generates profits for use by others to stupid to gain it.

This is a very touching story. I don't think it was symbolic, given the lengths to which both the examiners and Dr. Syllm-Rapoport went to legitimately defend her research. Kudos all around and a great wrong was righted. (Yes, there are and have been many atrocities committed and their number doesn't diminish the greatness of any individual act of restoration.)

She might have remained just a doctor, but now she's... a doctor doctor!
( huh? )

Actually, in Germany (unlike, say, in the U.S.) multiple doctorates are explicitly mentioned in the title [wikipedia.org] during formal address. Someone with two doctorates is actually "Frau Doktor Doktor X" someone with a bunch of doctorates (earned and honorary) would be "Frau Dr. Dr. h.c. mult." etc.

Al-Qaeda is to Muslims as the KKK is to Christians... I have not problem wiping out Al-Qaeda or ISIS as that is just providing assistance in them meeting the Prophet, now wiping all Muslims is an entirely different story same applies to KKK vs. Christians.

Though honestly in my experience all "Children of the Book" are assholes.

When someone starts bombing civilians we have passed pretty clearly by the "ideological" into the "corporeal". I can guarantee you if ISIS / Al Queda were sitting in their corner of the world spouting their ideology at the top of their lungs we really wouldn't care. They are fair game not because of their ideology but because they go beyond having a belief, to trying to force it upon others with violence. It is the latter, and not the former, that absolutely makes it OK to wipe them out entirely. They have literally exclaimed that they will kill us if we don't kill them first, and then acted upon it. See the difference?

When someone starts bombing civilians we have passed pretty clearly by the "ideological" into the "corporeal". I can guarantee you if ISIS / Al Queda were sitting in their corner of the world spouting their ideology at the top of their lungs we really wouldn't care. They are fair game not because of their ideology but because they go beyond having a belief, to trying to force it upon others with violence. It is the latter, and not the former, that absolutely makes it OK to wipe them out entirely. They have literally exclaimed that they will kill us if we don't kill them first, and then acted upon it. See the difference?

Gee, are you trying to force your beliefs on me here? I see what you are doing there, problem is you don't.

You are a complete idiot. The only belief I am going to "force upon you" is that if you announce intent to harm me, and it is clear that your words are not merely words but you instead have established a record of actually acting on such words, then you can expect I'll force my belief that you deserve to die right down your ignorant throat.

... and make no mistake about it, you are a seriously stupid douchebag.

I can only assume you are intentionally misdirecting the conversation. The U.S. has never declared war upon an entire nation or people, and then proceeded to target everyone including all civilians, women and children first if they can have it. Try not to be such an ass next time.

I can only assume you are intentionally misdirecting the conversation. The U.S. has never declared war upon an entire nation or people, and then proceeded to target everyone including all civilians, women and children first if they can have it.

Yeah, they only kill them "by accident". Try not to be such an American next time.

What a load of steaming bull. Injustice is tightly tied to reality. Yes the individuals were responsible and are assholes - but you can't just white out the systemic and social side of things like it never happened. That is willful ignorance, that is choosing to be blind. People like you like to pretend hate crimes do not exist, ignore the effects of symbolic violence on entire groups of people, and in general make a fetish of "its just people, man". The injustice of a system that treats one group of people

If I call him a Nazi am I invoking Godwin or telling the truth??? This is my paradox... That is not pair of docs, that is when you have two versions of the manual and no about.txt to figure out which version you have.

Pedophilia is only bad because society decided it was bad. Before we decided it was bad, it wasn't. There's no proof that there is any psychological damage to children who engage in sexual acts with adults that isn't caused by how such children are treated by other adults, and how sex in general is treated. In other words, children feel violated because they are treated as having been violated. If you convince a child to eat an ice cream cone, we don't consider that abuse, even if they wouldn't have eat

I think it is fair to say that a dog who knows something about physics, rockets, nuclear reactions, aeronautics, etc. would be considered important anywhere at any time, if only for the entertainment value.

I just really enjoyed grad school too much to want to finish, and they eventually made it clear to me that I'd better defend soon or they'd kick me out. Of course, I also wasn't accomplishing nearly as much in the interim as the article's subject.

It's an inspiring story. All the same, my dissertation defense is something that I'm just as happy I won't have the opportunity to tackle later in life...

I sometimes have this nightmare: I haven't been attending a class that I'm signed up for. (Usually because I didn't know that I was signed up for it.) Since I'm so far behind in the class, I have to drop the class, and there's just a short time left to drop it. I'm frantically rushing to drop the class before the deadline, after which you can't drop the class.

This makes me think that there really are subliminal messages fed to us through TV somehow, or maybe on the radio, and the people behind this grand experiment are reading this thread in not-so-quiet anticipation. Bastards.

I have an interesting story about him that I probably should not share and most certainly should not share under my moniker... However...

I had a younger friend call me and ask if I had any good weed. I, of course, did. They wanted to share some "Maine Skunk" with this gentleman as he was doing a gig at Sunday River. It is a rather long drive but I meandered down and was rather kind. So this old man met Afroman and I am going to stop the story here. The first part I am absolutely positive will impact nobody

I have an interesting story about him that I probably should not share

Since you seem to be a pretty forthcoming fella, let me ask you a question about your part of the country.

My wife's been offered a position at UVM in Brunswick, VT. You have any opinion about quality of life there? I'm a little worried about New England winters, but I can't imagine it's much nastier than Chicago. It looks beautiful and the wife's an avid skiier. We're probably pretty close in age to you, maybe 3 or 4 years younger.

There are a lot of fake liberals there. I am not saying this with political motivations. Vermont is not as liberal as people think. They are, well, slow but the quality of life is good, the policing is lax, and the weather is probably a bit tamer actually as I have been to both in the winter.

What's missing from TFA is that she wasn't just a "normal doctor" but became the first professor for neonatalogy ever worlwide - in the German Democratic Republic (i.e. the socialist part of Germany at the time), where she had moved to from the US, being a socialist and afraid of persecution during the McCarthy period.